Drivers’ Memo #15: Travel & registrations of PHEVs vs EVs

Welcome aboard: Dr Daniel Myall, a Leaf owner from Christchurch, is volunteering his time and skills to analyse some of the Flip the Fleet database. Thanks!

We are delighted that Foodstuffs have enrolled all 28 of their eNV200 vans in Flip the Fleet so that their lessons are shared with us all. When combined with the 12 vans already enrolled, a good national picture of eNV200’s performance should emerge. Please invite any other commercial fleets you are associated with to sign-up and share their information. The Foodstuffs collaboration brings our current enrollments to 419.

October’s 1-click survey: Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV) and Range Extender (REX) electric vehicle owners were nearly unanimous (94% either ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘agreed’) that they will make an important contribution to transitioning to low emission transport in New Zealandhttp://flipthefleet.org/2017/1-click-survey-12/ . In contrast, there was a split vote amongst the pure EV owners: a majority (61%) still celebrate the role of PHEVs and REXs, but 22% ‘disagree’ or ‘strongly disagree’ that they will make an important contribution. The scepticism amongst the latter group is based mainly on the belief that PHEVs and REXs contribute less than EVs to environmental wellbeing (especially reduced emissions) and an expectation that they will not be as cost effective for their owners. There is a broad consensus that the PHEVs and REXs help by drawing more and different people into buying low emission vehicles (mainly by overcoming real or imagined range limitations constraints of EVs). We recommend a more nuanced advocacy and education programme that minimises the number of people that buy PHEVs or REXs when an EV would have met their transport needs.

Trip distances and number of sales of PHEVs and EVs: In view of the concerns expressed by many of you that PHEVs and REXs are much less environmentally friendly and less cost effective, Daniel Myall analysed the trip distances recorded in the Flip the Fleet database so far:

There were just 11 PHEVs that are contributing trip data so far, compared to 137 EVs, so our ability to confidently assess their relative trip distances is limited. Please enlist help from other PHEV and REX owners to contribute to Flip the Fleet so that we can improve certainty.

The mean last trip distance (away and back to base combined) for EVs is 53 km (95% uncertainty band is 43 to 64 km).

The mean last trip distance for REX/PHEV is 59 km (95% uncertainty 27 to 91 km).

A plot of the cumulative trip distances (Fig. 1 below) shows that EVs travel further than PHEVs in the most common trips around their home base. Daniel tested this pattern (using a ‘Bayesian binomial model’)

39% of trips away and back to base by EVs were more than 50 km (95% uncertainty 35% to 44%). We chose 50 km as the dividing line because most PHEVs can travel about that far on their battery alone.

In contrast, only 15% of trips by PHEVs/REXs were more than 50 km (95% uncertainty 6% to 29%).

We conclude that (a) there is no evidence that PHEVs and REXs are travelling further overall than EVs on average; (b) we do not yet know if the emissions from occasional longer trips by PHEVs and REXs more than exceeds emissions from their more restricted use around base.; and (c) that PHEVs and REXs are indeed avoiding a lot of fuel use near their base.

The latest figures available online from NZ’s Ministry of Transport (Fig 2) show that in the second quarter of 2017, almost exactly the same number of new PHEVs/REXs (128) were registered as were new EVs (127). In sharp contrast, only 9.5 % of the second-hand Low Emission Vehicles registered were PHEVs or REXs (50) compared to EVs (474). As one of the respondents to our 1-click survey pointed out, part of the attraction of PHEVs is that they are available new compared to a relatively limited range of new EV models for sale in New Zealand so far.

Figure 2: NZ Ministry of Transport figures for registrations of Low Emission Vehicles in the second quarter of 2017.

Reaching out to prospective buyers: The media release and associated Infographic to summarise these results will be posted shortly at http://flipthefleet.org/discussion/. We are pleased with media uptake already (see 29 mentions that we know about since our launch on 28 June 2017 at http://flipthefleet.org/resources/media-clippings/). However, we have not had time to engage in the social media networks, and hope that you all might start injecting Flip the Fleet data into the discussions you are following. It’s your project and your information, so why not actively share it in your networks?

This month’s hint to get the most out of Flip the Fleet’s dashboard: Click on the ‘i’ button at the top of each report to read what it’s about. You can download or email yourself a Pdf or Excel copy of the graph by clicking on the blue ‘Export’ button near the top.